Bleu Caldwell

I've never drawn a cartoon, but the idea for this one popped into my head and since I'm attempting a return to illustration, I thought I'd see if I could put it onto paper. I don't know that it's a successful cartoon, and it was hard to achieve any real line variation without a Wacom tablet, but I'm really just happy to have drawn something.

Since the cartoon itself is probably as obsure as Hillary Clinton's asbestos joke, I'll explain. I generally only listen to podcasts—my 60G video iPod is filled with audiobooks, podcasts both audio and video, but no music. Having forgotten my iPod on a recent trip to the gym, I turned to my iPhone, which only has music on it. I was very happily listening to Boten Anna by Basshunter, a high energy Swedish group that I heard about on Net@Nite, and realizing how much I miss music, when it hit me that this happens every time I listen to music. Yet I always return to the habit of listening to podcasts because, as is often the case in this information-obsessed world, I might miss something. Like one of Merlin's Mannerisms. It's a completely frivolous technological conundrum.

If you're more interested in creating cartoons than illustrating them, you might want to check out a fun little site called Toon Doo.

I currently freelance through an agency because I want to get out of debt before I completely destabilize myself, but I dream of one day freelancing on my own. This is partially because I hate offices, and partially because I really hate having a 9 to 5 schedule, but mostly because it means I could work anywhere. I blame Neil Gaiman for this dream. I've been reading Neil's blog (which I highly recommend) for years, and listening him talk publicly for much longer than that, and he's always talking about popping off to remote corners so that he can write without distraction. I've never forgotten the story where he tells his agent that he doesn't care where it is, he just wants to go somewhere orange (as in warm -- he currently lives in Minnesota). I'd like to be able to pop off to somewhere orange, or just somewhere quiet, whenever I'd like. It would make me very happy.

At any rate, although I don't plan to strike out independently for many years, I keep it in mind and I try to keep my workspace portable. I try to keep my 'office' as virtual as possible by using online applications whenever possible (preferably ones that also work with the iPhone -- I'm really looking forward to the third party apps) and keeping track of it all with iGoogle.

Freelance Switch recently posted a 4-part series called Becoming a Freelance Web Worker on the whys and hows of going freelance, and working anywhere was just covered in the 4th and final chapter. I'm happy that I've at least got the going-mobile part down, but Skellie points out something important in Part 3, The Working Day: "Technology won’t magically make you more productive. In fact, I think a lot of web workers fall into the trap of spending more time reading about productivity and learning to use new productivity tools than they do actually being productive!" So true! While I've been helped immensely by learning about productivity tools and by adopting an organizational system, it's still the doing the counts.

“There is no tonic out there for productivity like actually doing something.” -- Merlin Mann, 43 Folders

Although it's statements like this that actually make me feel much better:

“It’s so painfully ironic to be a disorganized personwho’s supposed to be really organized. It hurts.” -- Merlin Mann, MacBreak Weekly #18

This would have been fun to have over the holidays when my stepdad asked me how I felt about his choise of Comic Sans for a letter he was writing. ("Well, a couple of years ago there was an online petition to ban Comic Sans -- maybe you should use something else.) You can download this PDF, containing a variety of humorous bad-design notices that you can pass along to your family and friends, from the Design Police. I think they should make T shirts, too! This was brought to my attention by Design in the Fishbowl.

My #1 resolution of 2008: Create! It even rhymes.

I've been unhappy with my work for years now. I have practical skills—for example, I'm really good at production work because I worked as the only in-house creative at a nonprofit for a lot of years and clean files were really important. Creative and interesting files were not so much a priority.

I tried freelancing on the side, but while I'm good at producing what clients want, what they want is not necessarily what I want. Some designers seem to be good at convincing clients of what they want, but that's obviously not my forte.

I've come to realize that if I want to do interesting design—interesting art, especially—I'm going to have to do it for myself. I entered 2007 thinking that I wanted to improve my design work so that I could get a better job and make more money. That would be nice, but I left 2007 thinking that none of that really matters. I need to make a living, but honestly, if I can stop with my oh-so-American unnecessary overspending habits (Resolution #2) I can make a living continuing as I am now.

Basically, I just want to create work that I like, even if no one else ever even sees it and it never brings me a dime. It's not so much to ask, it's just going to take a lot of work and self-discipline. The year has started well. I'm currently working on a tattoo for my boyfriend's birthday and a little cartoon that popped into my head the other day (something I've never done before). I plan to document my progress here, and post any helpful hints I learn along the way.

One applicable article that I just ran across is "Ten Habits of Successful Artists" on the Chicago Artist's Resource site. A lot of it was already familiar, in theory if not yet in practice, but it's nice to be reminded.

A friend tweeted yesterday about a fun little site called Joe's Goals that I'm using to keep track of my resolution progress. A very simple concept, it's kind of the 2.0 version of the Seinfeld Productivity Calendar. It even has an iGoogle widget.

I also came across the blog Tiny Buildings (via John Nack on Adobe) as I was catching up on my Feeds earlier today. This is the kind of thing that I love. It amazes me that someone looked at a card or some food packaging and thought "Hey, I think I'll make a tiny building out of this!" and then (perhaps more importantly) actually did it. And keeps doing it, and then shares it with the world. You can also see (and contribute) to her Flickr posts by using the tinybuildings.com tag.

Ahh! I love technology, and I love creativity, and I vow to put them both to better use this year. May your 2008 inspire you to create as well!

As I was writing a post about bacon on my food blog, I came across this bacon scarf. It's an odd little product, and it's not something that I would buy for myself, but I really like the packaging. Equally odd is the site that sells it, Shopsin's General Store. I'm not sure that it's the most practical site—it took me a minute to figure out how it worked, and the fact that they felt the need to include an option to make the site larger in case you can't read it is telling—but I think it's visually interesting.